Adventures in Brewing, Part 3 - AKA, My Strange Saturday

I wasn't expecting today to be anything interesting. It's just a rainy Saturday. It's also bottling day. I was a little trepidatious about bottling, so I decided to go to Amanda's house before climbing to get it over with, and to care for the puddies, who are very well.

So, here we go. I got there, started following the instructions, and all started off fine. The beer smells good. I cleaned it all, mastered siphoning today, and got the beer out of the carboy and back into the bucket. I then got the beer from the bucket to the bottles successfully (with priming sugar mixture :-) ), and capped the bottles successfully as well.

The cleanup is where things got interesting (though not bad), and where I typically need help in life. First, I cleaned out the bucket. That went fine. Then, the carboy. It's difficult to get detritus from the carboy when the neck is so small. But, I successfully figured out how to get that one going too. In the process, I feel like I got half the kitchen wet, but I'm probably exaggerating. It couldn't have been more than a quarter of it. But, it's all dry now.

I also discovered that iodine likes to TRY to stain countertop. Some of the iodaphore got onto the bottle, and I placed it on the counter and left it for a while, not having known that. I discovered the ioda-ring, panicked slightly, and then took to cleaning it. It wouldn't immediately come out, but Bon Ami seems to have done the trick. I successfully removed the stain from the countertop, thankfully. I'd have felt miserably guilty if I'd stained it permanently.

While there, I also performed an experiment of sorts. Since at no point has the carboy ever been been full to the neck, I decided to determine how full the bucket should be to get the carboy filled properly. It turns out the magic number is just a hair over the 3 mark. Hooray. Now I think we just have to make enough wort not to dilute it too much when putting it in the bucket. I'm betting the more wort, the more potent the beer. That might be obvious, but I learn a lot of obvious things the hard way. I've reinvented the wheel so many times, they might as well call it the "idjamamit greg."

Then, during the downpour that ensued on the way home, I stopped at Costco. On the way, while listening to the radio, an announcement came on for sneak preview tickets to the 98 Rock showing of Quarantine. I called in and won! I also won some tickets to Kim's Krypt and a chance to go to LA for the premier of the Quarantine in Hollywood. Awesome! I got to talk to Stash from 98 Rock. That was cool. He's a nice guy.

All that, and it's only about 2:00. What does the rest of the day hold in store? Oh, yeah, and I never did make it climbing...